them and took up a chant, male voices singing a chorus, female answering with a high, lilting refrain that ended in a short, shrill ululation, like the warbling of a thousand birds, before the men responded with another chorus. The dancers met once more and parted to begin the cycle anew. It went on for ten or fifteen minutes without stopping. Fitzhugh took another drink. His flesh tingled as voice, drum, and choreography fused into a harmonious whole that summoned him out of his separate self, called to him to unite himself with it, and his pulse quickening to match the pulse of the drums, he swayed with the people all around him. They had become one thing, a single being proclaiming in the union of sound and movement concordant joy in a divided, joyless land. The human spirit will endure, cried this being composed of many beings drawn into a circle; war and suffering will pass away.
The music abruptly stopped. The male dancers fled the stage. The xylophone played a rill of light, swift notes, and the drums began again, sending flurries of wild, syncopated throbs across the circle, stirring the women into a new dance. They snaked around the fire twice, and a third time, and then wound toward Fitzhugh and Douglas, strutting as before. The spectators broke into another communal chant, and in that flickering, enclosed world, its effect was almost hypnotic. The women drew closer and closer till they were barely a yard away from where Fitzhugh and Douglas sat with the nazir. Suddenly one girl leaped in front of the old man and, with a violent toss of her head, flung her braided hair over his head. He jumped up, wrapped one arm around her waist, and pressed his cheek to her forehead. His legs briefly recovered their youth as he danced with her in that posture; then he raised his free hand, snapped his fingers, and sat down again. Fitzhugh realized that this was a demonstration of what to do, for in a second one of the dancers came to him and covered his face with her hair while another did the same to Douglas. The American got into the spirit of the thing; he was on his feet and dancing. Fitzhugh remained in his chair. The woman paused in her movements and looked at him as if he’d insulted her. His heart rapped against his ribs, whether from ecstasy or fear or a little of both he couldn’t tell. His partner was Suleiman’s junior wife, and he didn’t know if dancing such a sensuous dance with her would provoke a fit of jealous rage. Suleiman had that sword at his feet.
The nazir appeared to sense his quandary. He grinned and told him, “Shuu! Your friend, do as he is!”
Douglas couldn’t quite get the beat or the steps, but he was trying, whirling and stomping like an American Indian, to the crowd’s delight. Fitzhugh knew he could do better. He’d been a good dancer in the tourist discos of Mombasa. Of course, he wasn’t in Mombasa and this wasn’t a disco, but when Suleiman’s wife again threw the canopy of waist-length braids over him, he was out of his chair, all self-consciousness gone. The drumming took control of his limbs as he embraced her slim, taut waist with his left arm and lay his cheek to her forehead, the musk of her sweat and of the oil that made her legs and arms gleam intoxicating him as all the marissa in the village could not have done. He danced till he was breathless, then raised his right hand above her head, clicked his fingers, and let her go. She gifted him with that smile of hers, and he heard the throng laughing and cheering its approval. He was relieved to see Suleiman laughing and cheering right along with them.
Douglas and Fitzhugh tried their hand on the drums, then danced some more, caught up in the jubilant atmosphere. The celebration was an act of rebellion, no less than firing a shot; it rebuked the dour, violent ascetics who ruled this country. After the fire had burned down to embers, Michael emerged from the crowd to remind Their Excellencies to get some sleep; he intended to start for the airfield well before dawn. Suleiman picked up his sword and escorted them home.
In a state of happy weariness, Fitzhugh flopped onto his sleeping bag and smoked a last cigarette. “I think the old man was wrong,” he